100 ‘Damned’ Good Reasons to Be An Atheist, Part 6
Many religious people will tell you that it’s better to believe than it is to not believe, and bring out a whole suitcase of ‘logical’ arguments for why that is the case, but they’d be lying. Here’s why it’s better to be a Heathen like me.
51. No New Earth — Certain eschatological traditions claim that the world will be destroyed in the End Times and then be reborn after in the grace and glory of the ‘most high.’ As nice as this fairy tale is on the surface, it’s utter bullshit when we examine what science has to say on the subject of the world ending. The consensus among cosmologists seems to be that this lump of rock and water as we know it wont ‘end’ until the sun starts dying and expands into a Red Giant, in several billion years time, consuming the inner planets as it does so. It’s possible that we’ll have evolved into higher life forms, but the long LONG history of this planet seems to suggest that our species will die out long before that has a chance of occurring.
52. No Armageddon — Sorry to harp on all this End Times crap twice in a row but it has to be stressed that Evangelicals have caused a lot of anxiety over the last century because of the fact that they can’t stop pushing this delusion that there will some great, ultimate conflict between good and evil, and that it will be coming in your lifetime. It’s a load of crap, however, because this notion of Armageddon has been a thing for longer than christianity has been a thing. Think about that. For over two millennia, religious tradition has been informing its adherents that the end will come before they die. I don’t know about you but it seems to me that the logical move would have been to abandon ages ago an idea with such a horrendous predictive track record.
53. No Proposition 8’s — Since Atheists generally accept a broad swath of the population as valid members of the human community, you wont find us using underhanded means to help fund the passage of ballot initiatives, TWO STATES AWAY from our power base, which are meant to enshrine bigotry into that state’s laws.
54. We sacrifice to our stomachs, not a god — Again, Atheists have no arbitrary rules governing food consumption, thus we have no need for absurd rules governing ritualized slaughter of the animals we eat in order to make them ‘spiritually’ suitable for our digestive tract.
55. No premiums for our bullshit — Sure, there are Atheist comedians out there who, as a matter of professional necessity, require the purchase of a ticket to take in their spiel. And any given Atheist author is perfectly justified asking people to pay for the books they write. However, we don’t hide the majority of our information behind exorbitant fees and surcharges as a requirement for ‘enlightenment’ like some ‘religious’ traditions do.
56. D&D isn’t real — Have you ever read that absurdly idiotic Chick Tract where the D&D player commits suicide because their character died in the game…? Don’t bother if you haven’t. It’s the dumbest premise in the world; so dumb Troma films wouldn’t make a movie out of it if you paid them to do so. The hysterics generated in the ’80s by satanic panic led to some really stupid shit on the part of Evangelicals and this, you may be surprised to know, wasn’t the most insane.
57. No rods to spoil the child — Atheists are very averse to the idea of harm, particularly harm perpetuated in the name of religion. Hence, our community doesn’t condone the use of things like leather belts or tree switches as a punishment on children. And given that Evangelicals are so ignorantly science averse, they’ll never know, or accept, that psychological studies have confirmed how damaging this kind of abuse is on children and how lasting it is throughout their lives.
58. ‘In the Spirit’ means alcohol — …and nothing more. If you’ve never been to an Evangelical church, I can’t really describe for you how odd it seems when random people start doing strange things because they’ve been filled with the ‘spirit’ of god. Some start dancing around or crying and weeping for seemingly no reason. Most of the time, however, this manifests as an activity called ‘speaking in tongues’ which believers will claim is a manifestation of a ‘divine’ language. People who have researched this phenomenon, however, have dismissed it all as garbled, incoherent gibberish. Thankfully, Atheists know that if you want to speak gibberish, you don’t need a religion to facilitate it, just a a bottle of fine rum.
59. Let’s talk bad dancing — Shuffling back and forth from one foot to another, bent over at the waste, is more aptly described as something that happens after one eats a bad corn dog at the carnival and then has to wait in line for the porta-john. However, it isn’t uncommon at tent revivals to see crap like this (no pun intended) explained away as a manifestation of the holy spirit descending on believers. Again, Atheists know that if you want to look stupid by dancing badly, get some rum…
60. No Prophecy to fulfill — Ever see that Ultra Zionists documentary done for the BBC by Louis Theroux? Remember the part that shows those wacko American Evangelicals who travel to Israel and work for free at the vineyard of a Jewish winemaker? Remember how they were ecstatic to do so because it felt like they were fulfilling a ‘prophecy’ of some kind? No… Well, there really are American Evangelicals who go to Israel on a regular basis and work for free in various ways in order to service some twisted fantasy that they are also the chosen of god and will be rewarded for their deeds. You’ll never see Atheists succumb to this kind of delusional thinking.
Continued in Part 7.
DISCLAIMER: For those who are curious, I do not allow feedback on posts of this nature due to the fact that religionists have nothing original to say on the matter. They continually trot out the same tired, unqualified arguments for why they are right and I am wrong and I refuse to waste another second of my life re-litigating these issue with people of limited imagination.
